I was chatting with my (very awesome) boss the other day about our team vs some of the other teams we work with, and how his philosophy is to use positive reinforcement rather than punishing/ embarrassment – or worse, passive-aggressiveness when dealing with employee behaviors.
I’ve definitely already realized before that positive reinforcement is far more effective in producing the behaviors you desire in almost any setting, but this conversation got me thinking of how much in my non-work life people utilize the passive-aggressive angle more than anything else, and hardly anyone exhibits positive reinforcement philosophy.
It’s so elegantly simple. I mean, this is how you train dogs effectively so it’s clearly on the most primal level that it just works to reward for the things you like, and ignore what you don’t. Punishing always has a negative effect. Punish a dog for peeing on the floor? He’ll continue to pee but will learn to do it out of your sight instead. Same goes with people – they won’t change the behavior but instead will either hide it from you, or just avoid you altogether.
That’s actually what I feel like doing with certain people in my life. Let me pose this question – if every time you are around a certain person, they talk disparagingly about pretty much everyone else you both know, critiquing their actions or decisions – isn’t it pretty safe to say with certainty that they are doing the same about you when you are not present? Yes, yes it is. I mean it really makes you wonder what is being said about you, doesn’t it?
It’s not only passive aggressive, but rude. And I mean truly rude, not just “rude” like what you are being called for not taking petty actions that they expect but never say outright or ask for. So how to remedy this situation… hmm, well just avoid the perpetrators, correct? I mean if they’re going to critique regardless, you may as well save yourself some stress by avoiding the awkwardness and passive-aggressiveness, no?
But it’s always people of the ‘boomer’ generation doing this, and you really can’t avoid them. I work with like 70% boomers. They do this constantly. And it’s not only in the office — they are everywhere, leaving a huge wake of misguided critiques and judgements behind…
It’s like they have some secret check-list in their mind of what you should be doing per their arbitrary “standards” and if you don’t meet these requirements, you are negatively judged but you don’t really know why or what you did, and it just leaves you confused as to why they can’t just fucking ask you to do what they want. They’ll instead seethe silently as you fail to meet their criteria of a worthy individual, then when you leave they’ll comment to all who remain in their presence about what you did or did not do correctly. Well, I mean fuck this. I’m sick of it. Either reinforce what you want/like, or reinforce me to just remove myself from this bullshit altogether.
Oh also – the standards cannot vary person to person. If you’re going to critique a particular action, then it applies to everyone. Not just certain people. Be congruent.
And yes, I do realize this post is overtly passive-aggressive. Hypocrisy notwithstanding, it just needed to be said. The problem, however is that if I were to actually broach the topic in person then that in and of itself would be more fodder for the very critiques I’d be addressing! So basically I just find the situation hopeless.
